‘U.S. Asylum Decisions: Who You Face on the Bench is as Important as What You Face at Home’

Abstract

We engage theoretical debates within two sub-fields of political science in order to understand U.S. asylum decisions. First, there is significant disagreement among international relations scholars over whether U.S. asylum policy is primarily shaped by its strategic and material interests or by international humanitarian norms. Much of the theory and the existing analysis assumes a unitary actor, and focuses on asylum outcomes as annual averages for all applicants from a particular country. However, recent research has undermined this assumption. For example, an individual’s chance of asylum seems to be driven, at least in part, by the geographical location of the court or the particular judge the asylum seeker (see TRAC 2006 and Ramji-Nogales et al. 2007). This paper moves the theoretical exploration beyond the traditional unitary actor assumption of international relations models to the more appropriate micro level of analysis – the individual immigration judges’ decisions. Second, we seek to draw upon the judicial behavior literature which offers insights into the judicial actors, and we join that field’s debate about the extent to which the judges’ policy preferences shape their decisions. Specifically, we examine case outcomes of individual asylum seekers before judges in the U.S. immigration courts during the years 1997-2004 (329,678 case outcomes). Our time period captures the segment of cases that were decided between two significant changes in immigration law: the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of September 1996 and the Real ID Act of May 2005. We conclude that both norms and interests matter in asylum decisions, even at the individual applicant level. Our analysis also suggests that it is does indeed matter which judge hears an applicant’s claims. This analysis suggests that judges’ decisions are influenced by prior socialization through a variety of professional experiences that may shape or reflect their policy preferences or values. The potential combined effect of judicial characteristics can substantially alter the applicants’ odds of a grant or denial, even while controlling for a variety of other factors.